PR  3486 
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THE  DESERTED 
VILLAGE  ^  nc  A 
POEM  WRITTEN 
BY  OLIVER  GOLD 
SMITH  ^  PROFVSE 
LY  ILLVSTRATE  D 
WITH  FVLL-PAGE 
DRAWINGS  BY 
EDWIN  A.  ABBEY 
R.  A.  Nt  n? 


THE  LIBRARY  OF  THE 
UNIVERSITY  OF 
NORTH  CAROLINA 


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THE  LIBRARY  OF  THE 
UNIVERSITY  OF 
NORTH  CAROLINA 


ENDOWED  BY  THE 
DIALECTIC  AND  PHILANTHROPIC 
SOCIETIES 


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Copyright,  1902,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 


“  Hung  round  the  bowers,  and  fondly  look’d  their  last  ” 


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Copyright,  1902,  by  Harper  &  Brothers. 


All  rights  reserved. 
Published  October,  1902. 


INTRODUCTION 


WAS  Goldsmith’s  “deserted  village "  Lissoy,  in  tne 
county  of  Westmeath,  in  the  kingdom  of  Ireland; 
or  was  it  Kennaquhair,  in  Dream  County,  Poet  Land? 
The  Rev.  R.  H.  Newell,  B.D.,  and  Fellow  of  St.  John’s 
College,  Cambridge,  maintains  that  it  was  Lissoy.  In 
1811  he  published  a  quarto  volume  of  Goldsmith's  Poetical 
Works ,  the  chief  object  of  which  was  to  support  this  prop¬ 
osition.  He  referred  to  the  fact  that  Chaucer  had  depicted 
Woodstock  in  the  "  Cuckoo  and  the  Nightingale  "  (which, 
unfortunately  for  the  Rev.  R.  H.  Newell,  is  not  now  regarded 
as  Chaucer's),  and  he  instanced  the  resemblance  traced  by 
Sir  William  Jones  (how  far  off  Sir  William  Jones  seems  as 
a  critic!)  between  a  passage  in  “L'Allegro"  and  a  land¬ 
scape  near  Oxford.  He,  too,  had  found  resemblances.  He 

had  himself  been  to  Lissov.  He  had  discovered  there  a 

•  •  • 
m 


854274 


INTRODUCTION 


“  never  -  failing  brook"  and  a  "busy  mill,"  just  as  they 
are  in  Goldsmiths  time-honored  line;  and  he  was  satisfied 
that  the  "decent  church  that  topt  the  neighboring  hill" 
— seeing  that  churches  on  hills  are  so  exceptional — could 
(clearly)  be  none  other  than  the  church  of  Kilkenny  West 
as  seen  from  Lissoy  Parsonage.  Moreover,  he  found  a 
hawthorn-tree,  or  rather  the  stump  thereof,  which  in  its 
umbrageous  days  had  evidently  been  admirably  adapted 
for  "talking  age"  and  "whispering  lovers";  and  in  the 
little  mount  of  Knockaruadh  he  recognized  unhesitatingly 
the  eminence  indicated  in  the  passage: 

“  Sweet  was  the  sound  when  oft,  at  evening’s  close. 

Up  yonder  hill  the  village  murmur  rose ; 

There,  as  I  past,  with  careless  steps  and  slow, 

The  mingling  notes  came  soften’d  from  below : 

The  swain  responsive  as  the  milkmaid  sung, 

The  sober  herd  that  low’d  to  meet  their  young ; 

The  noisy  geese  that  gabbled  o’er  the  pool, 

The  playful  children  just  let  loose  from  school ;” 

and  so  forth,  filling  "  each  pause  the  nightingale  had  made." 
In  like  fashion,  the  school-house,  the  village  inn,  the  smithy 
are  all  identified  for  us  by  this  amiable  enthusiast.  He 
has  even  sketched  them,  in  the  obsolete  drawing-book 
manner  of  Paul  Sandby  and  the  first  water-colorists,  and 
had  them  reproduced  in  aquatint  by  Aiken.  One  has  to 


s 


IV 


INTRODUCTION 


“make  believe”  a  good  deal  in  order  to  detectjjx_these~bara 
and  amateur islTd^  th ' s  images. 

Like  his  own  “  Mr  female,”  they  are  decidedly  “unadorn'd 
and  plain/’  and,  borrowing  his  own  words  once  more,“  imag¬ 
ination”  has  “to  stoop”  (and  stoop  considerably)  if  it  is  to 
distinguish  Auburn  in  the  lineaments  of  Lissoy.  A  mill, 
a  tree,  a  hill  scarcdyHLMts  locality.  If,  as  Goldsmith 
tells  us,  the  “seats  of  his  youth”  really  lingered  in  his 
memory,  they  must  have  been  wholly  transfigured  in  the 
enchanted  haze  of  a  regretful  retrospect.  And  he  was  well 
placed  at  that  period  where  distance  adds  its  charm  to 
contemplation,  for  nearly  twenty  years — years  unusually 
chequered — had  passed  over  his  head  since,  starting  for 
Edinburgh,  he  had  left  forever  the  little  hamlet  of  his  boy¬ 
hood  on  the  road  from  Bally mahon  to  Athlone. 

He  himself,  if  one  knows  him  at  all,  whatever  may  have 
been  his  obligations  to  his  native  environment,  would 
probably  have  resented  too  nice  an  identification  of  Auburn 
with  Lisso}^.  He  had  become  “Dr.”  Goldsmith.  He  was 
a  member  of  the  Literary  Club.  He  had  been  appointed 
Professor  of  History  to  the  Royal  Academy;  and  he  was 
the  author  of  “  The  Traveller,”  a  philosophical  and  didactic 
poem.  As  a  “philosophical  and  didactic  poem”  he  chiefly 
valued  “The  Deserted  Village.”  It  was  not  upon  his 
exquisite  little  genre  pictures  —  not  upon  his  portraits  of 


v 


INTRODUCTION 


the  clergyman  and  the  village  school  -  master  —  not  upon 
his  vignette  of  that 

“  sad  historian  of  the  pensive  plain/’ 


the  aged  water-cress-gatherer,  that  he  prided  himself  most. 
It  was  upon  the  passages  which  treat  of  depopulation, 
and  the  alleged  cause  of  depopulation — luxury  —  that  he 
relied.  Nowadays  we  care  least  for  these.  We  doubt  his 
conclusions,  as  Johnson  did;  we  are  even  not  quite  sure 
about  his  facts.  But  not  so  Goldsmith.  “Sir,”  one  can 
imagine  him  saying — as,  indeed,  he  does  say  to  Reynolds 
in  his  admirable  “Dedication” — “I  sincerely  believe  what 
I  have  written.  I  have  taken  all  possible  pains,  in  my 
country  excursions,  for  these  four  or  five  years  past,  to  be 
certain  of  what  I  allege.  All  my  views  and  inquiries  have 
led  me  to  believe  those  miseries  real  which  I  here  attempt 
to  display.”  And  then,  if  Johnson  were  not  present  to 
rout  his  self-possession  by  a  thundering  “Why,  no,  sir,” 
or  other  ejaculation  of  offence,  he  would  probably  go  on  to 
trace  it  all  to  his  favorite  source,  and  perhaps  would  quote, 
in  his  queer,  halting,  but  not  unfeeling  utterance,  his  own 
verses : 


"  Thus  fares  the  land,  by  LUXURY  betray’d ; 
In  nature’s  simplest  charms  at  first  array’d, 
But  verging  to  decline,  its  splendors  rise, 

Its  vistas  strike,  its  palaces  surprise ; 

vi 


INTRODUCTION 


While,  scourg’d  by  famine  from  the  smiling  land, 

The  mournful  peasant  leads  lus  humble  band ; 

And  while  he  sinks,  without  one  arm  to  save. 

The  country  blooms — a  garden,  and  a  grave.” 

Yes,  he  had  seen  these  things.  But,  as  Macaulay  says, 
he  had  not  seen  them  together.  His  “  smiling  village"  was 
English;  his  evictions  were  Irish.  His  mistake  was  that 
(like  the  gentleman  who  wrote  on  Chinese  metaphysics) 
he  had  combined  his  information,  and  so  "produced  some¬ 
thing  which  never  was  and  never  will  be  seen  in  any  part 
of  the  world.’’ 

At  Lissoy,  however,  it  was  not  unnatural  that  so  com¬ 
plimentary  a  tradition  should  find  its  adherents.  Indeed, 
one  of  the  poet’s  admirers,  a  Mr.  Hogan,  who  christened 
his  house  “  Auburn,"  went  so  far  as  to  rebuild  or  repair 
the  old  ale-house  at  Lissoy,  and  to  equip  it  with  the  sign 
of  the  "Three  Jolly  Pigeons."  Furthermore,  he  restored 
or  supplied  the  properties  of  the  ale-house  in  the  poem. 
Whether  it  actually  had  its 

“  chest  contriv’d  a  double  debt  to  pay — 

A  bed  by  night,  a  chest  of  drawers  by  day,” 

we  know  not;  but  it  certainly  had 

“  The  white-wash’d  wall,  the  nicely  sanded  floor, 

The  varnish’d  clock  that  click'd  behind  the  door,” 

vii 


INTRODUCTION 


as  well  as 

"  The  pictures  plac’d  for  ornament  and  use. 

The  twelve  good  rules,  the  royal  game  of  goose.’' 

Nor,  says  Goldsmith's  laborious  first  biographer.  Prior, 
were  wanting  the 

"  broken  teacups,  wisely  kept  for  show,” 

which  glistened  over  the  chimney,  but  for  some  occult  rea¬ 
son  were  firmly  embedded  in  the  mortar — a  circumstance 
which  did  not  prevent  their  being  stolen,  together  with  the 
sign,  by  relic-hunters.  But  perhaps  the  most  interesting 
thing  about  Mr.  Hogan’s  renovated  hostelry  is  the  fact 
that,  to  the  unsympathetic  eye  of  criticism,  it  is  just  those 
very  objects  by  which  he  sought  to  establish  the  identity 
of  the  inn  at  Auburn  and  the  inn  at  Lisso^y  which  are 
most  assailable  by  a  heartless  incredulity.  Oddly  enough, 
some  twelve  years  before,  when  he  was  living  miserably  in 
Green  Arbour  Court,  Goldsmith  had  submitted  to  his  brother 
Henry  a  sample  of  a  heroi-comic  poem  describing  a  Grub 
Street  writer  in  bed  in  “a  paltry  ale-house.'’  In  this  “the 
sanded  floor,’’  the  “twelve  good  rules,”  and  the  broken 
teacups  all  played  their  parts  as  accessories,  and  even  the 
double-dealing  chest  had  its  prototype  in  the  poet’s  night¬ 
cap,  which  was  “a  cap  by  night — a  stocking  all  the  da}7.” 

viii 


INTRODUCTION 


A  year  or  two  later  he  expanded  these  lines  in  the  Citizen 
of  the  W orld,  and  the  scene  becomes  the  Red  Lion  in  Drury 
Lane.  From  this  second  version  he  adapted,  or  extended 
again,  the  description  of  the  inn  parlor  in  “  The  Deserted 
Village.”  It  follows,  therefore,  either  that  he  borrowed 
for  London  the  details  of  a  house  in  Ireland,  or  that  he 
used  for  Ireland  the  details  of  a  house  in  London.  If,  on 
the  other  hand,  it  be  contended  that  those  details  were 
common  to  both  places,  then  the  identification  in  these 
particulars  of  Auburn  with  Lissoy  falls  hopelessly  to  the 
ground. 

Something  of  the  same  treatment  may  be  applied  to  the 
characters  of  the  poem.  It  is  frequently  stated  that  the 
school-master  is  a  recollection  of  his  own  first  master  at 
Lissoy,  Thomas  or  “  Paddy '  '  Byrne.  That  some  of  Byrne's 
traits  are  probably  repeated  in  the  picture  may  be  admitted, 
but  a  closer  examination  tends  to  reduce  even  these  to  a 
minimum.  Byrne,  as  described  by  Goldsmith's  sister, 
was  a  character  so  individual  that,  if  Goldsmith  intended 
to  depict  him,  he  must  be  held  to  have  failed  conspicuously. 
Byrne  had  been  a  quartermaster  under  Peterborough  in 
Spain;  he  had  travelled  over  a  great  part  of  Europe,  and 
seen  strange  things  by  sea  and  land,  returning  to  his  native 
village  with  an  unabated  taste  for  a  wandering  life,  and  an 
infinite  faculty  for  relating  his  experiences.  To  the  little, 


IX 


INTRODUCTION 


thick-set,  and,  by  all  accounts,  thick-witted  boy  whom  he 
instructed  or  endeavored  to  instruct  in  “the  Three  R's," 
the  story  of  his  personal  perils  was  a  never-failing  source 
of  delight.  Nor  was  Byrne  entirely  limited  to  those  narra¬ 
tives  in  which  (metaphorically  speaking)  he  “shoulder'd 
his  crutch,  and  show'd  how  fields  were  won”;  he  had  an 
inexhaustible  supply  of  legends  of  fairies  and  banshees, 
and  he  was  an  adept  in  the  swarming  chap-book  literature 
of  his  day.  There  is  nothing  of  all  this  in  the  pedagogue 
of  “The  Deserted  Village."  Goldsmith  might  have  depicted 
that  worthy  just  as  well  if  he  had  never  heard  of  Paddy 
Byrne,  never  listened  to  his  tales  of  Fair  Rosamond  and 
Tom  Hickathrift,  or  his  memories  of  “the  great  Rapparee 
chiefs,  Baldearg  O’Donnell  and  galloping  Hogan."  Paddy 
Byrne  may  have  been  “severe,  and  stern  to  view,"  though 
one  would  scarcely  expect  it  from  his  other  characteristics; 
he  may  have  been  able  to  presage  “times  and  tides,"  and 
even  have  used  “words  of  learned  length  and  thundering 
sound."  But  it  is  evident  that,  if  these  were  among  his 
peculiarities,  Goldsmith  must  have  intentionally  neglected 
his  essential  features  in  order  to  seize  upon  certain  char¬ 
acteristics  which  he  possessed  in  common  with  a  great 
many  people.  Indeed,  if  it  were  not,  as  Fluellen  says,  “to 
mock  at  an  honorable  tradition,"  now  too  long  established 
to  be  eradicable,  it  might  be  contended  that  Goldsmith 


x 


INTRODUCTION 


never  thought  of  Paddy  Byrne  at  all,  but  simply  built  up 
“  out  of  scraps  and  heel-taps  ”  of  observation  and  experience 
and  memory  what  the  world  has  since  recognized  as  an 
almost  typical  picture  of  a  village  school-master. 

It  is  probable,  however,  that  there  is  more  in  the  story 
which  connects  the  village  clergyman,  also  rather  a  type 
than  a  character,  with  certain  members  of  the  poet’s  own 
family,  who,  at  the  time  he  wrote,  had  all  become  part  of  his 
youth  and  of  an  irrevocable  past.  But  the  very  discord¬ 
ance  of  the  identification  seems  to  show  conclusively  that 
no  one  figure  sat  by  itself  for  the  picture.  Mrs.  Hodson, 
Goldsmith’s  sister,  for  example,  maintained  that  it  was  the 
likeness  of  her  father.  “The  Rev.  Charles  Goldsmith,’’ 
she  wrote,  “is  allowed  by  all  that  knew  him  to  have  been 
faithfully  represented  by  his  son  in  the  character  of  the 
Village  Preacher  in  his  poem.”  Others  found  the  true 
original  in  Goldsmith’s  brother  Henry,  the  brother  to  whom, 
turning  nobly  from  a  noble  patron,  he  had  dedicated  “The 
Traveller.”  “It  will  also  throw  a  light  upon  many  parts 
of  it,”  he  says,  “when  the  reader  understands  that  it  is  ad¬ 
dressed  to  a  man  who,  despising  Fame  and  Fortune,  has 
retired  early  to  Happiness  and  Obscurity,  with  an  income 
of  forty  pounds  a  year.”  If  the  amount  of  the  stipend  is  to 
decide  the  question,  then  this  is  exactly  the  amount  upon 
which  the  parson  of  the  poem  was  “passing  rich.”  Un- 


xi 


INTRODUCTION 


fortunately  it  was  also  the  stipend  of  many  other  country 
curates — of  Charles  Churchill,  for  instance — in  whom  we 
should  certainly  not  seek  for  Goldsmith's  model.  A  third 
claimant  has  been  put  forward  in  the  person  of  the  Rev. 
Thomas  Contarine,  that  kind  and  long-suffering  uncle  to 
whom  the  poet  owed  so  deep  a  debt  of  gratitude.  It  was 
Uncle  Contarine  who  had  assisted  him  at  school  and  col¬ 
lege;  Contarine  who  had  established  him  as  a  tutor;  Con¬ 
tarine  who  had  equipped  him  fruitlessly  for  the  law;  and 
Contarine  who  had  finally  supplied  the  funds  to  enable 
him  to  study  medicine  at  Edinburgh.  But  the  truth  is 
that  he  drew  from  none  of  these  individually,  though  he 
may  have  borrowed  traits  from  each.  That  they  were  all 
kindly,  modest,  simple,  unambitious,  generous,  is  proba¬ 
bly  true;  but  it  is  impossible  to  dissociate  from  them  a  cer¬ 
tain  weakness  and  want  of  fibre  which  are  frequently  found 
in  combination  with  these  amiable  qualities.  To  what  he 
saw  in  them  Goldsmith  added  a  dignity,  a  moral  grandeur, 
which  again  exalts  the  character  to  the  type.  Of  Charles 
Goldsmith  it  might  be  said  truly  that  “  his  house  was  known 
to  all  the  vagrant  train,"  for  his  son  has  told  us  so;  of 
his  brother  Henry  that  he  “  nor  e'er  had  chang'd,  nor  wish'd 
to  change,  his  place” — a  statement  which  the  dedication 
to  “  The  Traveller  "  supports;  of  his  uncle  Contarine  that  he 
was  “  more  skilled  to  raise  the  wretched  than  to  rise."  But 


xn 


INTRODUCTION 


not  to  one,  or  to  any  of  these  separately,  belong  those  noble 
concluding  lines  which  for  so  many  years  have  been  re¬ 
garded  as  the  ne  varietur  representation  of  a  typical  village 
pastor— a  picture  for  a  parallel  to  which  one  must  travel 
back  some  four  hundred  years  to  Chaucer's  "poor  parson 
of  a  town  ”  : 

“  Beside  the  bed  where  parting  life  was  laid, 

And  sorrow,  guilt,  and  pain  by  turns  dismay'd. 

The  reverend  champion  stood.  At  his  control. 

Despair  and  anguish  fled  the  struggling  soul; 

Comfort  came  down  the  trembling  wretch  to  raise. 

And  his  last  faltering  accents  whisper'd  praise. 

"  At  church,  with  meek  and  unaffected  grace. 

His  looks  adorn'd  the  venerable  place ; 

Truth  from  his  lips  prevail'd  with  double  sway. 

And  fools  who  came  to  scoff  remain'd  to  pray. 

The  service  past,  around  the  pious  man. 

With  steady  zeal,  each  honest  rustic  ran ; 

Even  children  follow'd  with  endearing  wile. 

And  pluck'd  his  gown,  to  share  the  good  man’s  smile. 

His  ready  smile  a  parent's  warmth  exprest, 

Their  welfare  pleas'd  him,  and  their  cares  distrest; 

To  them  his  heart,  his  love,  his  griefs  were  given, 

But  all  his  serious  thoughts  had  rest  in  heaven. 

As  some  tall  cliff  that  lifts  its  awful  form, 

Swells  from  the  vale,  and  midway  leaves  the  storm, 
Though  round  its  breast  the  rolling  clouds  are  spread, 
Eternal  sunshine  settles  on  its  head." 

That  branch  of  criticism  which  busies  itself  with  parallel 
passages  has  been  unusually  active  with  respect  to  the  de- 


xm 


INTRODUCTION 


servedly  admired  simile  with  which  the  foregoing  lines 
conclude,  chiefly,  it  would  appear,  with  the  view  of  proving 
that  it  could  not  possibly  have  been  Goldsmith's  own.  It 
is  not  improbable  that  it  was ;  and,  indeed,  it  might  plausi¬ 
bly  be  contended,  in  a  controversy  in  which  so  much  is 
taken  for  granted,  that  he  himself  expanded  it,  by  the  or¬ 
dinary  operations  of  imagination,  from  his  own  line  in  “  The 
Traveller"  where  he  describes  himself  as  “plac'd  on  high 
above  the  storm's  career."  But  it  is  certainly  noteworthy 
that  so  many  passages  have  been  discovered  which  might 
have  suggested  it.  We  pass  by  Claudian,  Lucan,  Statius 
— all  of  whom  have  been  named — because,  in  all  likelihood, 
if  Goldsmith  found  it  anywhere,  he  found  it  nearer  home. 
But  the  first  Lord  Lytton  called  attention  to  a  passage 
from  Chaulieu  which  certainly  has  much  affinity  to  Gold¬ 
smith's  lines.  An  even  closer  parallel  was  pointed  out  in 
1886  by  a  correspondent  in  the  Academy,  from  Chapelain's 
“Ode  to  Richelieu": 

"  Dans  un  paisible  mouvement 
Tu  t’eleves  au  firmament, 

Et  laisses  contre  toi  murmur er  cette  terre; 

Ainsi  le  haut  Olympe,  a  son  pied  sabl-onneux , 

Laisse  fumer  la  joudre  et  gronder  la  tonnerre, 

Et  garde  son  sommet  tranquille  et  lumineux.” 

There  is  also,  as  Mitford  shows,  a  passage  in  Young’s 


xiv 


INTRODUCTION 


“Night  Thoughts”  which,  in  an  incondite  way,  foreshad¬ 
ows  the  idea : 

"As  some  tall  Tow’r  or  lofty  Mountain’s  Brow 
Detains  the  Sun,  Illustrious  from  its  Height, 

While  rising  Vapours,  and  descending  Shades, 

With  Damps  and  Darkness  drown  the  Spatious  Vale : 
Undampt  by  Doubt,  Undarken’d  by  Despair, 

Philander,  thus,  augustly  rears  his  Head.” 

That  Goldsmith  may  have  met  with  both  of  these  is  not 
unlikely.  He  knew  Young  and  Young's  works,  and  in 
“Edwin  and  Angelina"  quoted  a  couplet  from  the  same 
source  as  that  above  cited.  He  was  also  thoroughly  fa¬ 
miliar,  probably  as  a  result  of  his  wanderings  in  France, 
with  the  French  minor  poets  of  the  seventeenth  and  eigh¬ 
teenth  centuries,  to  whom  his  obligations,  acknowledged 
and  unacknowledged,  are  not  inconsiderable.  Either  in 
Chapelain  or  Young  or  Chaulieu  he  had  probabty  made  men¬ 
tal  note  of  the  passage,  and  retained  it  so  long  that  it  had 
become  an  undistinguishable  part  of  his  own  imaginative 
equipment.  This  is  not  an  unusual  occurrence,  nor  is  it 
the  only  one  in  Goldsmith.  The  line,  "A  breath  can  make 
them,  as  a  breath  has  made,"  is  an  almost  textual  repro¬ 
duction  of  an  old  French  motto  upon  an  hour-glass,  which 
Victor  Hugo  is  also  said  to  have  unconsciously  repeated; 
and  the  famous  simile  in  “  The  Traveller  ”  of  the  separation 


xv 


INTRODUCTION 


that  "drags,  at  each  remove,  a  lengthening  chain,”  is  but 
a  memory  of  Cibber,  who  "conveyed ”  it  from  Dryden.  That 
Goldsmith  got  it  from  Cibber  is  probable  from  the  fact  that 
another  well-known  saying  of  his  is  traced  to  the  same 
source.  When  he  said  of  Johnson  that,  "when  his  pistol 
missed  fire,  he  knocked  you  down  with  the  butt  end,”  he 
was  only  saying  what — as  Boswell  is  careful  to  inform 
us — Cibber  had  said  before  him  in  one  of  his  comedies. 
There  is  another  example  of  his  curious  mental  method  in 
the  "Good-Natured  Man.”  Years  before,  in  the  Enquiry 
into  the  Present  State  of  Polite  Learning,  he  had  quoted 
Sir  William  Temple's  exquisite  likening  of  life  to  "a  fro- 
ward  child,  that  must  be  humored  and  coaxed  a  little  till 
it  falls  asleep,  and  then  all  care  is  over.”  When  Gold¬ 
smith  first  used  this  he  gave  it  as  a  quotation  from  an  un¬ 
named  author ;  by  the  time  his  first  comedy  was  written,  he 
had  adopted  the  foundling  of  his  brain,  and  puts  it  without 
acknowledgment  into  the  lips  of  Croaker. 

As  in  the  case  of  "  The  Traveller,”  several  of  the  couplets 
in  "The  Deserted  Village”  have  their  first  form  in  the  poet's 
prose  works.  If  there  is  no  line  textually  repeated,  like 
"A  land  of  tyrants  and  a  den  of  slaves”  in  the  earlier  poem, 
there  are  more  than  one  of  the  couplets  which  recall  pas¬ 
sages  both  in  the  Citizen  of  the  World  and  the  Vicar  of 
Wakefield.  But  the  closest  parallel  is  a  paragraph  of  "A 

xvi 


INTRODUCTION 


City  Night  Piece/'  an  essay  printed  in  the  Bee,  and  then 
repeated  in  one  of  Lien  Chi's  epistles :  "  These  poor  shiver¬ 
ing  females  have  once  seen  happier  days  and  been  flattered 
into  beauty.  .  .  .  Perhaps  now  lying  at  the  doors  of  their 
betrayers,  they  sue  to  wretches  whose  hearts  are  insensi¬ 
ble,  or  debauchees  who  may  curse,  but  will  not  relieve  them. " 
In  "The  Deserted  Village"  this  is  obviously  and  happily 
expanded  in  the  touching — 

“  Are  these  thy  serious  thoughts?  Ah!  turn  thine  eyes 
Where  the  poor  houseless  shivering  female  lies. 

She  once,  perhaps,  in  village  plenty  blest, 

Has  wept  at  tales  of  innocence  distrest; 

Her  modest  looks  the  cottage  might  adorn, 

Sweet  as  the  primrose  peeps  beneath  the  thorn; 

Now  lost  to  all,  her  friends,  her  virtue  fled, 

Near  her  betrayer's  door  she  lays  her  head. 

And,  pinch'd  with  cold,  and  shrinking  from  the  shower. 
With  heavy  heart  deplores  that  luckless  hour 
When  idly  first,  ambitious  of  the  town, 

She  left  her  wheel  and  robes  of  country  brown." 

It  has  been  already  said  that,  in  spite  of  rumors  to  the 
contrary,  Goldsmith  never  returned  to  Lissoy.  But  to  the 
last  he  was  always  intending  to  go  back.  "I  am  again 
just  setting  out  for  Bath,"  he  writes  in  one  of  his  letters, 
"and  I  honestly  say  I  had  much  rather  it  had  been  for  Ire¬ 
land  with  my  nephew,  but  that  pleasure  I  hope  to  have 
before  I  die."  This  is  practical  proof  that  his  wish  was 


XVII 


INTRODUCTION 


never  fulfilled,  for  the  words  were  written  in  the  last  years 
of  his  life;  and  they  are  also  practical  proof  that,  whether 
Lissoy  was  or  was  not  the  "  deserted  village,  ”  he  desired 
to  revisit  the  "seats  of  his  youth/'  To  this  feeling  he  has 
consecrated  what  are  perhaps  the  most  genuinely  tender 
and  yearning  of  his  verses : 

"  In  all  my  wanderings  round  this  world  of  care, 

In  all  my  griefs — and  God  has  given  my  share — 

I  still  had  hopes,  my  latest  hours  to  crown, 

Amidst  these  humble  bowers  to  lay  me  down; 

To  husband  out  life’s  taper  at  the  close. 

And  keep  the  flame  from  wasting  by  repose : 

I  still  had  hopes,  for  pride  attends  us  still. 

Amidst  the  swains  to  show  my  book-learn’d  skill, 
Around  my  fire  an  evening  group  to  draw, 

And  tell  of  all  I  felt,  and  all  I  saw; 

And,  as  a  hare  whom  hounds  and  horns  pursue. 

Pants  to  the  place  from  whence  at  first  he  flew, 

I  still  had  hopes,  my  long  vexations  past. 

Here  to  return — and  die  at  home  at  last.” 

These,  again,  have  their  prose  expression  in  the  Citizen 
of  the  World  :  "  However  we  toil,  or  wheresoever  we  wander, 
our  fatigued  wishes  still  recur  to  home  for  tranquillity; 
we  long  to  die  in  that  spot  which  gave  us  birth,  and  in  that 
pleasing  expectation  opiate  every  calamity." 

In  some  memorable  lines  with  which  he  concluded  his 

work  he  bade  adieu  to  Poetry.  She  was  unfit,  he  said,  in 

that  degenerate  time,  to  "touch  the  heart" — one  of  her 

•  •  • 

XVlll 


INTRODUCTION 


functions  upon  which,  as  an  unregarded  critic,  he  had  in¬ 
sisted,  even  in  those  blank  days  of  his  bondage  to  Griffiths 
the  bookseller.  She  was  ‘'his  shame  in  crowds ;  his  solitary 
pride";  and  he  further  apostrophizes  her  as — 

"  Thou  source  of  all  my  bliss  and  all  my  woe. 

Thou  found' st  me  poor  at  first,  and  keep’st  me  so." 

Whether  he  sincerely  intended  to  abandon  the  Muse  ma}7 
be  a  moot  point.  There  is  often  in  such  official  severances 
no  more  than  a  wistful  craving  to  test  the  actual  position — 
to  savor  by  anticipation  the  sweets  of  a  quasi-posthumous 
repute  — to  excite  in  advance  the  grateful  homage  of  re¬ 
gret.  But  whatever  were  Goldsmith’s  real  feelings  upon 
the  subject,  his  words,  in  two  respects,  proved  strictly  ac¬ 
curate.  "The  Deserted  Village"  was  really  his  last  se¬ 
rious  poetical  effort.  The  "  Threnodia  Augustalis"  is 
admittedly  a  mere  occasional  piece,  while  "Retaliation’’ 
was  the  outcome  of  an  accident.  Nor  is  there  reason  for  sup¬ 
posing  that  he  himself  would  have  published  any  of  the 
verses  which  appeared  after  his  death,  although  two  of 
them,  "The  Haunch  of  Venison"  and  the  "Letter  in  Prose 
and  Verse  to  Mrs.  Bunbury, "  are  among  his  most  popular 
productions.  What  he  regarded  as  his  poetical  works 
proper  were  " The  Hermit,"  " The  Traveller,"  and  “The  De¬ 
serted  Village,"  those  pieces,  in  fact,  upon  which  he  had 


xix 


INTRODUCTION 


labored  most  assiduously — “the  rest  is  all  but  leather  or 
prunello  " — and  to  this  vein  of  poetry  he  did,  in  fact,  bid 
good-bye,  whether  he  meant  it  or  not. 

The  other  respect  in  which  his  words  were  no  literary 
fiction  is  the  fact  that,  great  as  was  his  reputation,  his  verse 
“kept  him  poor.”  His  process  of  composition  was  lan¬ 
guid  and  fastidious;  his  final  touches  lingering  and  far 
between.  If  a  well-known  anecdote  is  to  be  taken  literally, 
he  considered  from  four  to  ten  lines  a  good  morning’s  work — 
a  rate  of  progression  which  approaches  the  “incredible 
slowness"  of  Malherbe  or  Waller.  Yet  for  “  The  Traveller" 
he  got  but  twenty  guineas,  and  for  “  The  Deserted  Village" 
a  hundred.  Such  remuneration  must  naturally  keep  him 
poor,  and  it  is  not  wonderful  that  he  should  have  fallen 
back  upon  the  easy,  perspicuous  prose,  which  he  wrote  so 
readily  and  so  inimitably.  That,  in  the  circumstances, 
he  should  have  written  poetry  at  all  is  remarkable;  that  in 
the  “dead  season"  between  Gray  and  Cowper  he  should 
have  left  behind  him  a  piece  of  work  so  beautiful,  so  tender 
in  touch,  and  so  enduring  as  “The  Deserted  Village"  is 
more  remarkable  still.  There  is  no  surer  proof  that  the 
Muses  are  truly  to  some,  as  the  Latin  poet  has  it,  dulces 
ante  omnia— sweet  beyond  aught  else. 

Austin  Dobson. 

Ealing,  August,  1902. 

xx 


TO  SIR  JOSHUA  REYNOLDS 


Dear  Sir,— 

I  can  have  no  expectations,  in  an  address  of  this  kind, 
either  to  add  to  your  reputation  or  to  establish  my  own. 
You  can  gain  nothing  from  my  admiration,  as  I  am  ignorant 
of  that  art  in  which  you  are  said  to  excel ;  and  I  may  lose 
much  by  the  severity  of  your  judgment,  as  few  have  a  juster 
taste  in  poetry  than  you.  Setting  interest,  therefore,  aside, 
to  which  I  never  paid  much  attention,  I  must  be  indulged 
at  present  in  following  my  affections.  The  only  dedication 
I  ever  made  was  to  my  brother,  because  I  loved  him  better 
than  most  other  men.  He  is  since  dead.  Permit  me  to 
inscribe  this  poem  to  you. 

How  far  you  may  be  pleased  with  the  versification  and 
mere  mechanical  parts  of  this  attempt,  I  do  not  pretend 
to  inquire;  but  I  know  you  will  object  (and,  indeed,  several 


xxi 


TO  SIR  JOSHUA  REYNOLDS 


of  our  best  and  wisest  friends  concur  in  the  opinion)  that 
the  depopulation  it  deplores  is  nowhere  to  be  seen,  and 
the  disorders  it  laments  are  only  to  be  found  in  the  poet's 
own  imagination.  To  this  I  can  scarcely  make  any  other 
answer  than  that  I  sincerely  believe  what  I  have  written; 
that  I  have  taken  all  possible  pains,  in  my  country  ex¬ 
cursions,  for  these  four  or  live  years  past,  to  be  certain  of 
what  I  allege;  and  that  all  my  views  and  inquiries  have 
led  me  to  believe  those  miseries  real  which  I  here  attempt 
to  display.  But  this  is  not  the  place  to  enter  into  an  in¬ 
quiry  whether  the  country  be  depopulating  or  not;  the 
discussion  would  take  up  much  room,  and  I  should  prove 
myself,  at  best,  an  indifferent  politician  to  tire  the  reader 
with  a  long  preface  when  I  want  his  unfatigued  attention 
to  a  long  poem. 

In  regretting  the  depopulation  of  the  country,  I  inveigh 
against  the  increase  of  our  luxuries;  and  here  also  I  expect 
the  shout  of  modern  politicians  against  me.  For  twenty 
or  thirty  years  past,  it  has  been  the  fashion  to  consider 
luxury  as  one  of  the  greatest  national  advantages;  and 
all  the  wisdom  of  antiquity  in  that  particular  as  erroneous. 
Still,  however,  I  must  remain  a  professed  ancient  on  that 
head,  and  continue  to  think  those  luxuries  prejudicial 
to  states  by  which  so  many  vices  are  introduced  and  so 
many  kingdoms  have  been  undone.  Indeed,  so  much  has 


r 


V 


/ 


xxn 


TO  SIR  JOSHUA  REYNOLDS 


been  poured  out  of  late  on  the  other  side  of  the  question 
that,  merely  for  the  sake  of  novelty  and  variety,  one  would 
sometimes  wish  to  be  in  the  right. 

I  am,  dear  sir, 

Your  sincere  friend  and  ardent  admirer, 

Oliver  Goldsmith. 


“  The  Deserted  Village,  a  Poem  by  Dr.  Goldsmith.  London : 
Printed  for  W.  Griffin,  at  Garrick's  Head,  in  Catharine 
Street,  Strand,  1770,  4to,”  was  first  published  in  May,  1770, 
and  ran  through  six  editions  in  the  same  year  in  which 
it  was  first  published.  The  price  was  2s. 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


EDWIN  A.  ABBEY . Frontispiece 

“  HUNG  ROUND  THE  BOWERS,  AND  FONDLY  LOOK'D  THEIR 

LAST  " . Facing  Frontispiece 

PAGE 


r‘  HOW  OFTEN  HAVE  I  LOITER'D  O'ER  THY  GREEN  "...  2 

"  THE  DECENT  CHURCH  THAT  TOPT  THE  NEIGHBORING 

HILL  " .  5 

“  THE  HAWTHORN  BUSH,  WITH  SEATS  BENEATH  THE 

SHADE  " .  9 

“  WHEN  EVERY  ROOD  OF  GROUND  MAINTAIN'D  ITS  MAN  "  13 

“  AND  EVERY  PANG  THAT  FOLLY  PAYS  TO  PRIDE  "  .  17 


“  AROUND  MY  FIRE  AN  EVENING  GROUP  TO  DRAW  "  .  .  21 

“  NOR  SURLY  PORTER  STANDS  IN  GUILTY  STATE  "...  25 

“  THE  SWAIN  RESPONSIVE  AS  THE  MILKMAID  SUNG  ”  .  .  27 

“  THE  SOBER  HERD  THAT  LOW’D  TO  MEET  THEIR  YOUNG  "  31 

"  THE  SAD  HISTORIAN  OF  THE  PENSIVE  PLAIN  "...  35 

"  HIS  HOUSE  WAS  KNOWN  TO  ALL  THE  VAGRANT  TRAIN  "  39 

“  BESIDE  THE  BED  WHERE  PARTING  LIFE  WAS  LAID  ”  43 


XXV 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

“  HIS  LOOKS  ADORN'D  THE  VENERABLE  PLACE  ”  .  .  .  . 

"  A  MAN  SEVERE  HE  WAS,  AND  STERN  TO  VIEW  ”  .  . 

"  I  KNEW  HIM  WELL,  AND  EVERY  TRUANT  KNEW  ”  .  . 

“  AT  ALL  HIS  JOKES,  FOR  MANY  A  JOKE  HAD  HE  ”  .  . 

“  WHILE  WORDS  OF  LEARNED  LENGTH  AND  THUNDER¬ 
ING  SOUND  ” . 

“  THE  PARLOR  SPLENDORS  OF  THAT  FESTIVE  PLACE  ”  . 

"  RELAX  HIS  PONDEROUS  STRENGTH,  AND  LEAN  TO 

HEAR  ” . 

“  THE  HOST  HIMSELF  NO  LONGER  SHALL  BE  FOUND  ”  . 

“  NOR  THE  COY  MAID,  HALF  WILLING  TO  BE  PREST  ”  . 

<f  BUT  THE  LONG  POMP,  THE  MIDNIGHT  MASQUERADE, 
WITH  ALL  THE  FREAKS  OF  WANTON  WEALTH  ARRAYED  ” 
"  .  .  .  .  THE  MAN  OF  WEALTH  AND  PRIDE 

TAKES  UP  A  SPACE  THAT  MANY  POOR  SUPPLIED—” 
“  AS  SOME  FAIR  FEMALE,  UNADORN'D  AND  PLAIN, 
SECURE  TO  PLEASE  WHILE  YOUTH  CONFIRMS  HER 

REIGN  ” . 

“  SHE  THEN  SHINES  FORTH,  SOLICITOUS  TO  BLESS, 

IN  ALL  THE  GLARING  IMPOTENCE  OF  DRESS  ”  .  .  .  . 

“  THERE  THE  PALE  ARTIST  PLIES  THE  SICKLY  TRADE  ” 
“  SWEET  AS  THE  PRIMROSE  PEEPS  BENEATH  THE  THORN  ” 
"  NEAR  HER  BETRAYER’S  DOOR  SHE  LAYS  HER  HEAD  ” 


PAGE 

47 

5i 

53 

57 

61 

65 

69 

73 

77 

79 

83 

87 

9i 

95 

99 

103 


xxvi 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 


“  DOWN  WHERE  YON  ANCHORING  VESSEL  SPREADS  THE 

SAIL  ” . . 105 

“  DOWNWARD  THEY  MOVE—A  MELANCHOLY  BAND — ”  109 

“  THOU  FOUND’ST  ME  POOR  AT  FIRST,  AND  KEEP'ST  ME 

so  ” . 113 


THE  DESERTED  VILLAGE 

A  Poem 


THE  DESERTED  VILLAGE 


Street  Auburn!  loneliest  nillage  of  the  plain, 
Where  health  and  plenty  cheer’d  the  laboring  strain. 
Where  smiling  spring  its  earliest  nisit  paid, 

And  parting  summer’s  lingering  blooms  delay’d; 

Dear  lonely  botners  of  innocence  and  ease, 

Seats  of  my  youth,  tnhen  enery  sport  could  please, 
Hotn  often  hane  I  loiter’d  o’er  thy  green, 

Where  humble  happiness  endear’d  each  scene! 


3 


How  often  hare  I  paus’d  on  enery  charm, — 

The  shelter’d  cot,  the  cultioated  farm, 

The  nener-failing  brook,  the  busy  mill, 

The  decent  church  that  topt  the  neighboring  hill, 
The  haiothorn  bush,  with  seats  beneath  the  shade, 
For  talking  age  and  mhispering  loners  made!1 
Horn  often  hare  I  blest  the  coming  day,2 
When  toil  remitting  lent  its  turn  to  play, 


Copyright,  19U2,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 


“ The  decent  church  that  topt  the  neighboring  hill” 


And  all  the  oillage  train,  from  labor  free, 

Led  up  their  sports  beneath  the  spreading  tree; 
While  many  a  pastime  circled  in  the  shade, 

The  young  contending  as  the  old  suroey’d; 

And  many  a  gambol  frolick’d  o’er  the  ground, 

And  sleights  of  art  and  feats  of  strength  tuent  round ! 
And  still  as  each  repeated  pleasure  tir’d, 
Succeeding  sports  the  mirthful  band  inspir’d; 


7 


The  dancing  pair  that  simply  sought  renotrn, 

By  holding  out  to  tire  each  other  down ; 

The  strain,  mistrustless  of  his  smutted  face, 

While  secret  laughter  titter’d  round  the  place; 

The  bashful  uirgin’s  sidelong  looks  of  lore, 

The  matron’s  glance  that  mould  those  looks  reprore. 

\ 

These  were  thy  charms,  street  rillage!  sports  like  these, 
With  street  succession,  taught  eren  toil  to  please; 


8 


. 

. 


•: 


■  *  , 


These  round  thy  bowers  their  cheerful  influence  shed, 
These  were  thy  charms — but  all  these  charms  are  fled. 

Sweet  smiling  nillage,  loneliest  of  the  lawn, 

Thy  sports  are  fled,  and  all  thy  charms  withdrawn ; 
Amidst  thy  bowers  the  tyrant’s  hand  is  seen,3 
And  desolation  saddens  all  thy  green : 

One  only  master  grasps  the  whole  domain, 

And  half  a  tillage  stints  thy  smiling  plain , 


11 


No  more  thy  glassy  brook  reflects  the  day, 

But,  chok’d  mith  sedges,  morks  its  meedy  may ; 
Along  thy  glades,  a  solitary  guest, 

The  hollom-sounding  bittern  guards  its  nest;4 
Amidst  thy  desert  malks  the  lapming  flies, 

And  tires  their  echoes  mith  uncaried  cries. 

Sunk  are  thy  bomers  in  shapeless  ruin  all, 

And  the  long  grass  o’ertops  the  mouldering  mall 


12 


Copyright,  1902,  oy  Harrier  &  Brothers 


“When  every  rood  of  ground  maintain’d  its  man 


A 


And,  trembling,  shrinking  from  the  spoiler’s  hand, 
Far,  far  atoay  thy  children  leace  the  land. 

Ill  fares  the  land,  to  hastening  ills  a  prey, 
Where  mealth  accumulates,  and  men  decay  : 
Princes  and  lords  may  flourish,  or  may  fade — 

A  breath  can  make  them,  as  a  breath  has  made; 
But  a  bold  peasantry,  their  country’s  pride, 

When  once  destroy'd,  can  neoer  be  supplied. 


15 


A  time  there  mas,  ere  England’s  griefs  began, 
When  eoery  rood  of  ground  maintain’d  its  man ; 
For  him  light  labor  spread  her  toholesome  store, 
Just  gaoe  trhat  life  requir’d,  but  gaue  no  more: 
His  best  companions,  innocence  and  health, 

And  his  best  riches,  ignorance  of  toealth. 

But  times  are  alter’d ;  trade’s  unfeeling  train 
Usuro  the  land,  and  dispossess  the  strain : 


16 


Copyright,  1902,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 


And  every  pang  that  folly  pays  to  pride 


. 


\ 

I* 


* 


•  . 


Along  the  laron  inhere  scatter’d  hamlets  rose, 
UnuMeldy  inealth  and  cumbrous  pomp  repose ; 

And  eoery  tnant  to  opulence  allied, 5 
And  eoery  pang  that  folly  pays  to  pride. 

Those  gentle  hours  that  plenty  bade  to  bloom, 

Those  calm  desires  that  ask’d  but  little  room, 

Those  healthful  sports  that  grac’d  the  peaceful  scene 
Lin’d  in  each  look,  and  brighten’d  all  the  green. 


19 


These,  far  departing,  seek  a  kinder  shore, 

And  rural  mirth  and  manners  are  no  more. 

Street  Auburn !  parent  of  the  blissful  hour, 

Thy  glades  forlorn  confess  the  tyrant’s  poirer. 
Here,  as  1  take  my  solitary  rounds, 

Amidst  thy  tangling  tralks  and  ruin’d  grounds, 

And,  many  a  year  elaps’d,  return  to  view 

Where  once  the  cottage  stood,  the  hawthorn  grew,6 


20 


“Around  my  fire  an  evening  group  to  draw” 


Remembrance  makes,  mith  all  her  busy  train, 

Smells  at  my  breast,  and  turns  the  past  to  pain. 

In  all  my  manderings  round  this  morld  of  care, 
In  all  my  griefs— and  God  has  gioen  my  share — 

I  still  had  hopes,  my  latest  hours  to  cromn, 

Amidst  these  humble  bomers  to  lay  me  domn; 

To  husband  out  life’s  taper  at  the  close, 

And  keep  the  flame  from  masting  by  repose:7 


23 


I  still  had  hopes,  for  pride  attends  us  still, 
Amidst  the  srnains  to  shorn  my  book-learn’d  skill, 
Around  my  fire  an  eaening  group  to  dram, 

And  tell  of  all  I  felt,  and  all  I  sa w ; 

And,  as  a  hare  mhom  hounds  and  horns  pursue, 
Pants  to  the  place  from  rnhence  at  first  he  flern, 
1  still  had  hopes,  my  long  aexations  past, 

Here  to  return — and  die  at  home  at  last.8 


24 


s 


J5s§^ 


Copyright,  1902,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 

“Nor  surly  porter  stands  in  guilty  state' 


Copyright,  1902,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 


“The  swain  responsive  as  the  milkmaid  sung" 


0  blest  retirement,  friend  to  life’s  decline, 
Retreats  from  care,  that  necer  must  be  mine, 

Horn  happy  he  mho  crornns,  in  shades  like  these,9 
A  youth  of  labor  rnith  an  age  of  ease ; 

Who  quits  a  tuorld  where  strong  temptations  try, 
And,  since  ’tis  hard  to  combat,  learns  to  fly! 

For  him  no  mretches,  born  to  mork  and  meep, 
Explore  the  mine,  or  tempt  the  dangerous  deep ; 


29 


Nor  surly  porter  stands  in  guilty  state, 

To  spurn  imploring  famine  from  the  gate: 

But  on  he  mooes  to  meet  his  latter  end, 

Angels  around  befriending  Virtue’s  friend ; 
Bends  to  the  grace  mith  unperceio’d  decay,10 
While  Resignation  gently  slopes  the  may ; 

And,  all  his  prospects  brightening  to  the  last, 
His  heaoen  commences  ere  the  toorld  be  past. 11 


30 


3 

c/> 

O- 


r** 


O 

o 


O 

*0 


cr 

v, 

X 

» 

-n 

(D 

•1 

te 

c: 

n 

O 

r- 

C r 
a 
cn 


Srneet  mas  the  sound  mhen  oft,  at  eoening’s  close, 
Up  yonder  hill  the  cillage  murmur  rose ; 

There,  as  I  past  with  careless  steps  and  slom, 

The  mingling  notes  came  soften’d  from  below : 

The  smain  responsine  as  the  milkmaid  sung, 

The  sober  herd  that  low'd  to  meet  their  young; 

The  noisy  geese  that  gabbled  o’er  the  pool, 

The  playful  children  just  let  loose  from  school ; 


33 


The  watch-dog’s  ooice,  that  bay’d  the  whispering  wind, 


And  the  loud  laugh  that  spoke  the  racant  mind- 
These  all  in  sweet  confusion  sought  the  shade, 
And  fill’d  each  pause  the  nightingale  had  made. 
But  now  the  sounds  of  population  fail, 

No  cheerful  murmurs  fluctuate  in  the  gale ; 

No  busy  steps  the  grass-grown  footway  tread, 
For  all  the  bloomy  flush  of  life  is  fled — 


s 

Copyright,  1902,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 

“The  sad  historian  of  the  pensive  plain  ” 


All  but  yon  widow’d,  solitary  thing, 

That  feebly  bends  beside  the  plashy  spring; 

She,  wretched  matron — forc’d  in  age,  for  bread. 
To  strip  the  brook  with  mantling  cresses  spread, 
To  pick  her  wintry  fagot  from  the  thorn, 

To  seek  her  nightly  shed,  and  weep  till  morn — 
She  only  left  of  all  the  harmless  train, 

The  sad  historian  of  the  pensioe  plain.12 


37 


Near  yonder  copse,  where  once  the  garden  smil'd, 
And  still  where  many  a  garden  flower  grows  wild ; 
There,  where  a  few  torn  shrubs  the  place  disclose, 
The  cillage  preacher’s  modest  mansion  rose.13 
A  man  he  was  to  all  the  country  dear, 

And  passing  rich  with  forty  pounds  a  year. 

Remote  from  towns  he  ran  his  godly  race, 

Nor  e’er  had  chang’d,  nor  wish’d  to  change,  his  place; 


38 


Unpractis’d  he  to  fawn,14  or  seek  for  power, 

By  doctrines  fashion’d  to  the  oarying  hour; 

Far  other  aims  his  heart  had  learn’d  to  prize, 
More  skill’d  to  raise 15  the  wretched  than  to  rise. 
His  house  was  known  to  all  the  oagrant  train, 

He  chid  their  wanderings,  but  relien’d  their  pain ; 
The  long-remember’d  beggar  was  his  guest, 

Whose  beard  descending  swept  his  aged  breast; 


41 


The  ruin’d  spendthrift,  nom  no  longer  proud, 

Claim’d  kindred  there,  and  had  his  claims  allom’d;  " 
The  broken  soldier,  kindlg  bade  to  stag, 

Sat  bg  his  fire,  and  talk’d  the  night  amag ; 

Wept  o’er  his  mounds,  or,  tales  of  sorrom  done, 
Shoulder’d  his  crutch,  and  shom’d  horn  fields  mere  mon. 
Pleas’d  mith  his  guests,  the  good  man  learn’d  to  glom, 
And  quite  forgot  their  rices  in  their  moe; 


42 


Careless  their  merits  or  their  faults  to  scan, 

His  pity  gaue  ere  charity  began. 

Thus  to  reliece  the  mretched  teas  his  pride, 
And  eoen  his  failings  lean’d  to  Virtue’s  side; 
But  in  his  duty  prompt  at  eoery  call, 

He  match’d  and  mept,  he  pray’d  and  felt  for  all 
And,  as  a  bird  each  fond  endearment  tries 
To  tempt  its  nem-fledg’d  offspring  to  the  skies, 


45 


He  tried  each  art,  reproo’d  each  dull  delay, 

Allur’d  to  brighter  worlds,  and  led  the  tray. 

Beside  the  bed  where  parting  life  was  laid, 
And  sorrow,  guilt,  and  pain  by  turns  dismay’d, 

The  reoerend  champion  stood.  At  his  control, 
Despair  and  anguish  fled  the  struggling  soul ; 
Comfort  came  down  the  trembling  wretch  to  raise 
And  his  last  faltering  accents  whisper’d  praise. 


46 


Copyright,  1902,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 


"His  looks  adorn’d  the  venerable  place ” 


At  church,  irith  meek  and  unaffected  grace, 
His  looks  adorn’d  the  renerable  place; 

Truth  from  his  lips  prerail’d  rnith  double  stray, 
And  fools  who  came  to  scoff  remain’d  to  pray.16 
The  serrice  past,  around  the  pious  man, 

With  steady  zeal,  each  honest  rustic  ran ; 

Been  children  follow’d  irith  endearing  mile, 


And  pluck’d  his  gotrn,  to  share  the  good  man’s  smile. 


His  ready  smile  a  parent’s  marmth  exprest, 

Their  melfare  pleas’d  him,  and  their  cares  distrest ; 
To  them  his  heart,  his  lore,  his  griefs  mere  gioen, 
But  all  his  serious  thoughts  had  rest  in  heaoen. 

As  some  tall  cliff  that  lifts  its  amful  form, 

Smells  from  the  rale,  and  midmay  leaoes  the  storm, 
Though  round  its  breast  the  rolling  clouds  are  spread, 
Eternal  sunshine  settles  on  its  head. 


50 


\ 


Copyright,  1902,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 

“  A  man  severe  he  was,  and  stern  to  view  ” 


Copyright,  1902,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 


n 


“  I  knew  him  ivell,  and  every  truant  knew 


. 


' 

V 


Beside  yon  straggling  fence  that  skirts  the  tray, 
With  blossom’d  furze  unprofitably  gay, 

There,  in  his  noisy  mansion,  skill’d  to  rule, 

The  oillage  master  taught  his  little  school. 

A  man  seoere  he  mas,  and  stern  to  view; 

1  kn ew  him  mell,  and  eoery  truant  knew: 

Well  had  the  boding  tremblers  learn’d  to  trace 
The  day’s  disasters  in  his  morning  face; 


55 


/ 


f 


Full  mell  they  laugh’d  mith  counterfeited  glee 
At  all  his  jokes,  for  many  a  joke  had  he; 

Full  mell  the  busy  mhisper,  circling  round, 
Conoey’d  the  dismal  tidings  mhen  he  fromn’d. 
Yet  he  mas  kind,  or,  if  seoere  in  aught, 

The  lore  he  bore  to  learning  mas  in  fault. 
The  oillage  all  declar’d  horn  much  he  knem; 
’Tmas  certain  he  could  mrite,  and  cipher  too; 


56 


if 

* 


Copyright,  1902,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 


“At  all  his  jokes ,  for  many  a  joke  had  he’’ 


Lands  he  could  measure,  terms  and  tides  presage, 
And  euen  the  storg  ran — that  he  could  gauge : 

In  arguing,  too,  the  parson  own'd  his  skill, 

For  eoen  though  canquish’d,  he  could  argue  still ; 
While  rnords  of  learned  length  and  thundering  sound 
Amaz’d  the  gazing  rustics  rang’d  around; 

And  still  theg  gaz’d,  and  still  the  rnonder  grern 
That  one  small  head  could  carrg  all  he  knern.17 


59 


But  past  is  all  his  fame.  The  eery  spot 


Where  many  a  time  he  triumph’d  is  forgot. 

Near  yonder  thorn,  that  lifts  its  head  on  high, 

Where  once  the  sign-post  caught  the  passing  eye, 

Low  lies  that  house  where  nut-broum  draughts  inspir’d, 
Where  graybeard  mirth  and  smiling  toil  retir’d, 

Where  uillage  statesmen  talk’d  with  looks  profound, 
And  nerns  much  older  than  their  ale  rnent  round. 

60 


s 


Imagination  fondly  stoops  to  trace 

The  parlor  splendors  of  that  festioe  place: 

The  tohitetrash’d  trail,  the  nicely  sanded  floor, 
The  rarnish’d  clock  that  click’d  behind  the  door; 
The  chest  contrio’d  a  double  debt  to  pay — 

A  bed  by  night,  a  chest  of  drainers  by  day  ; 

The  pictures  plac’d  for  ornament  and  use, 

The  ttreloe  good  rules,  the  royal  game  of  goose ; 


63 


The  hearth,  except  when  winter  chill’d  the  day, 
With  aspen  boughs,  and  flowers,  and  fennel  gay, 
While  broken  teacups,  wisely  kept  for  show, 
Rang’d  o’er  the  chimney,  glistened  in  a  row.19 

Vain,  transitory  splendors!  could  not  all 
Reprieoe  the  tottering  mansion  from  its  fall? 
Obscure  it  sinks,  nor  shall  it  more  impart 
An  hour’s  importance  to  the  poor  man’s  heart. 


64 


Thither  no  more  the  peasant  shall  repair 
To  street  oblioion  of  his  daily  care; 

No  more  the  farmer’s  netrs,  the  barber’s  tale, 
No  more  the  tnoodman’s  ballad  shall  preoail; 

No  more  the  smith  his  dusky  brotr  shall  clear, 
Relax  his  ponderous  strength,  and  lean  to  hear 
The  host  himself  no  longer  shall  be  found 
Careful  to  see  the  mantling  bliss  go  round ; 


67 


Nor  the  coy  maid,  half  milling  to  be  prest, 

Shall  kiss  the  cup  to  pass  it  to  the  rest 

Yes!  let  the  rich  deride,  the  proud  disdain, 
These  simple  blessings  of  the  loirly  train ; 

To  me  more  dear,  congenial  to  my  heart, 

One  natioe  charm  than  all  the  gloss  of  art : 
Spontaneous  joys,  tchere  nature  has  its  play, 

The  soul  adopts,  and  owns  their  first-born  stray ; 


68 


“  Relax  his 


ponderous  strength,  and  lean  to  hear 


Lightly  they  frolic  o’er  the  uacant  mind, 
Unenoied,  unmolested,  unconfin’d. 

But  the  long  pomp,  the  midnight  masquerade, 
With  all  the  freaks  of  rnanton  rnealth  array’d, 
In  these,  ere  triflers  half  their  rnish  obtain, 
The  toiling  pleasure  sickens  into  pain: 

And,  eoen  while  fashion’s  brightest  arts  decoy, 
The  heart  distrusting  asks,  if  this  be  joy. 


71 


Ye  friends  to  truth,  ye  statesmen  who  surcey 


The  rich  man’s  joys  increase,  the  poor’s  decay, 
’Tis  yours  to  judge  how  wide  the  limits  stand 
Between  a  splendid  and  a  happy  land.20 
Proud  swells  the  tide  with  loads  of  freighted  ore, 
And  shouting  Folly  hails  them  from  her  shore; 
Hoards  eoen  beyond  the  miser’s  wish  abound, 

And  rich  men  flock  from  all  the  world  around. 


72 

4* 


Copyright,  1902,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 


“The  host  himself  no  longer  shall  be  found” 


Yet  count  our  gains.  This  wealth  is  but  a  name, 
That  leaoes  our  useful  products  still  the  same. 

Not  so  the  loss.  The  man  of  wealth  and  pride 
Takes  up  a  space  that  many  poor  supplied — 

Space  for  his  lake,  his  park’s  extended  bounds, 

Space  for  his  horses,  equipage,  and  hounds: 

The  robe  that  wraps  his  limbs  in  silken  sloth. 

Has  robb’d  the  neighboring  fields  of  half  their  growth ; 


75 


His  seat,  inhere  solitary  sports  are  seen, 
Indignant  spurns  the  cottage  from  the  green ; 
Around  the  trorld  each  needful  product  flies 
For  all  the  luxuries  the  tnorld  supplies. 

While  thus  the  land,  adorn’d  for  pleasure  all, 

In  barren  splendor  feebly  traits  the  fall. 

As  some  fair  female,  unadorn’d  and  plain, 
Secure  to  please  trhile  youth  confirms  her  reign, 


76 


* 


. 

*• 


■ 


/ 


i 

. 


■ 


Copyright,  1902,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 

“  But  the  long  pomp,  the  midnight  masquerade, 
With  all  the  freaks  of  wanton  wealth  arrayed  ” 


Slights  eoery  borrotn’d  charm  that  dress  supplies, 
Nor  shares  voith  art  the  triumph  of  her  eyes; 

But  rnhen  those  charms  are  past,  for  charms  are  frail, 
When  time  advances,  and  when  loners  fail, 

She  then  shines  forth,  solicitous  to  bless, 

In  all  the  glaring  impotence  of  dress: 

Thus  fares  the  land,  by  luxury  betray’d ; 

In  nature’s  simplest  charms  at  first  array’d, 


81 


But  cerging  to  decline,  its  splendors  rise. 

Its  oistas  strike,  its  palaces  surprise ; 

While,  scourg’d  by  famine  from  the  smiling  land, 
The  mournful  peasant  leads  his  humble  band ; 
And  while  he  sinks,  without  one  arm  to  sane, 
The  country  blooms — a  garden,  and  a  grace. 

Where  then,  ah!  where  shall  pooerty  reside, 
To  scape  the  pressure  of  contiguous  pride? 


82 


Copyright,  1902,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 


The  man  of  ivealth  and  pride 
Takes  up  a  space  that  many  poor  supplied — ” 


' 


.  ' 


If  to  some  common’s  fenceless  limits  stray’d, 

He  drines  his  flock  to  pick  the  scanty  blade, 
Those  fenceless  fields  the  sons  of  trealth  dioide, 
And  eren  the  bare-trorn  common  is  denied. 

If  to  the  city  sped— trhat  traits  him  there? 
To  see  profusion  that  he  must  not  share ; 

To  see  ten  thousand  baneful  arts  combin’d 
To  pamper  luxury,  and  thin  mankind ; 


85 


To  see  those  joys  the  sons  of  pleasure  know,21 
Extorted  from  his  fellow-creatures’  woe. 

Here,  while  the  courtier  glitters  in  brocade, 

There  the  pale  artist  plies  the  sickly  trade ; 

Here,  while  the  proud  their  long-drawn  pomps  display 
There  the  black  gibbet  glooms  beside  the  way. 

The  dome  where  Pleasure  holds  her  midnight  reign, 
Here,  richly  deck’d,  admits  the  gorgeous  train; 


86 


s 


Copyright.  1902,  by  Harper  A  Brothers 


“As  some  fair  female,  unadorn’d  and  plain, 
Secure  to  please  while  youth  confirms  her  reign 


Tumultuous  grandeur  crowds  the  blazing  square, 

The  rattling  chariots  clash,  the  torches  glare. 

Sure  scenes  like  these  no  troubles  e’er  annoy ! 

Sure  these  denote  one  uniuersal  joy ! 

Are  these  thy  serious  thoughts  ?  Ah !  turn  thine  eyes 
Where  the  poor  houseless  shioering  female  lies. 

She  once,  perhaps,  in  rillage  plenty  blest, 

Has  wept  at  tales  of  innocence  distrest; 


89 


Her  modest  looks  the  cottage  might  adorn, 

Street  as  the  primrose  peeps  beneath  the  thorn ; 

Notn  lost  to  all,  her  friends,  her  oirtue  fled, 

Near  her  betrayer’s  door  she  lays  her  head,22 
And,  pinch’d  irith  cold,  and  shrinking  from  the  shoirer, 
With  heaoy  heart  deplores  that  luckless  hour 
When  idly  first,  ambitious  of  the  toirn, 

She  left  her  wheel  and  robes  of  country  brown. 


90 


Copyright,  1902,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 


“  She  then  shines  forth,  solicitous  to  bless, 
In  all  the  glaring  impotence  of  dress  " 


Do  thine,  sweet  Auburn,  thine,  the  loneliest  train 
Do  thy  fair  tribes  participate  her  pain? 

Enen  note,  perhaps,  by  cold  and  hunger  led, 

At  proud  men’s  doors  they  ask  a  little  bread ! 

Ah,  no.  To  distant  climes,  a  dreary  scene, 
Where  half  the  conuex  world  intrudes  between, 
Through  torrid  tracts  with  fainting  steps  they  go, 
Where  wild  Altama23  murmurs  to  their  woe. 


93 


Far  different  there  from  all  that  charm’d  before, 

The  carious  terrors  of  that  horrid  shore; 

Those  blazing  suns  that  dart  a  dotontcard  rag, 

And  fiercely  shed  intolerable  day ; 

Those  matted  moods  rnhere  birds  forget  to  sing, 

But  silent  bats  in  drotcsy  clusters  cling ; 

Those  poisonous  fields  rnith  rank  luxuriance  cromn’d, 
Where  the  dark  scorpion  gathers  death  around ; 


94 


Copyright,  1902,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 


“There  the  pale  artist  plies  the  sickly  trade ” 


. 


- 

■ 


Where  at  each  step  the  stranger  fears  to  wake 
The  rattling  terrors  of  the  rengeful  snake ; 

Where  crouching  tigers24  trait  their  hapless  prey, 
And  sarage  men  more  murderous  still  than  they ; 
While  oft  in  whirls  the  mad  tornado  flies, 
Mingling  the  rarag’d  landscape  with  the  skies. 
Far  different  these  from  erery  former  scene, 

The  cooling  brook,  the  grassy-rested  green, 


The  breezy  cooert  of  the  warbling  grooe, 

That  only  sheltered  thefts  of  harmless  lone. 

Good  Heaoen  !  what  sorrows  gloom’d  that  parting  day, 
That  call’d  them  from  their  natioe  walks  away ; 

When  the  poor  exiles,  eoery  pleasure  past, 

Hung  round  the  bowers,  and  fondly  look’d  their  last, 
And  took  a  long  farewell,  and  wish’d  in  rain 
For  seats  like  these  beyond  the  Western  main? 


98 


Copyright,  1902,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 


Siceet  as  the  primrose  peeps  beneath  the  thorn” 


And,  shuddering  still  to  face  the  distant  deep, 
Return’d  and  inept,  and  still  return’d  to  weep! 
The  good  old  sire,  the  first  prepar’d  to  go 
To  new-found  worlds,  and  wept  for  others’  woe 
But  for  himself,  in  conscious  cirtue  brace, 

He  only  wish’d  for  worlds  beyond  the  grace. 

His  locely  daughter,  lonelier  in  her  tears, 

The  fond  companion  of  his  helpless  years, 


101 


Silent  went  next,  neglectful  of  her  charms, 

And  left  a  loner’s  for  a  father’s  arms.25 

With  louder  plaints  the  mother  spoke  her  tnoes, 

And  blest  the  cot  where  enery  pleasure  rose ; 

And  kiss’d  her  thoughtless  babes  mith  many  a  tear, 
And  clasp’d  them  close,  in  sorrom  doubly  dear; 
Whilst  her  fond  husband  strone  to  lend  relief 
In  all  the  silent  manliness  of  grief.26 


102 

\ 


Copyright,  1902,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 


<  ( 


Near  her  betrayers  door  she  lays  her  head  ” 


■ 


HMa 


Copyright,  1909,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 


“  Down  where  yon  anchoring  vessel  spreads  the  sail  ” 


0  Luxury !  thou  curst  by  Hearen’s  decree, 

Wow  ill  exchang’d  are  things  like  these  for  thee! 
Hotr  do  thy  potions,  irith  insidious  joy, 

Diffuse  their  pleasures  only  to  destroy ! 

Kingdoms  by  thee,  to  sickly  greatness  grown, 
Boast  of  a  florid  rigor  not  their  own: 

At  erery  draught  more  large  and  large  they  groir, 
A  bloated  mass  of  rank  umrieldy  tnoe; 


107 


Till,  sapp’d  their  strength,  and  ecery  part  unsound, 
Down,  down  they  sink,  and  spread  a  ruin  round. 

Even  now  the  decastation  is  begun, 

And  half  the  business  of  destruction  done ; 

Been  now,  methinks,  as  pondering  here  I  stand, 

I  see  the  rural  Virtues  leace  the  land. 

Down  where  yon  anchoring  oessel  spreads  the  sail, 
That  idly  waiting  flaps  with  eoery  gale, 


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Copyright,  1902,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 


)) 


“  Downward  they  move — a  melancholy  band 


Downward  they  more,  a  melancholy  band, 

Pass  from  the  shore,  and  darken  all  the  strand. 
Contented  toil,  and  hospitable  care, 

And  kind  connubial  tenderness,  are  there ; 

And  piety  with  wishes  plac’d  abooe, 

And  steady  loyalty,  and  faithful  lore. 

And  thou,  sweet  Poetry,  thou  loneliest  maid, 

Still  first  to  fly  where  sensual  joys  innade; 


111 


Unfit,  in  these  degenerate  times  of  shame, 

To  catch  the  heart,  or  strike  for  honest  fame; 
Dear  charming  nymph,  neglected  and  decried, 

My  shame  in  crowds,  my  solitary  pride ; 

Thou  source  of  all  my  bliss  and  all  my  woe, 

Thou  found’st  me  poor  at  first,  and  keep’st  me  so 
Thou  guide  by  which  the  nobler  arts  excel, 

Thou  nurse  of  eoery  oirtue,  fare  thee  well ! 


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“Thou  found’ st  me  poor  at  first,  and  keep' st  me  so” 


. 


' 

\ 

. 


Farewell,  and  oh,  where’er  thy  uoice  be  tried, 
On  Torno’s  cliffs  or  Pambamarca’s  side,27 
Whether  where  equinoctial  terrors  glow, 

Or  winter  wraps  the  polar  world  in  snow, 

Still  let  thy  roice,  prerailing  oner  time, 
Redress  the  rigors  of  the  inclement  clime; 
Aid  slighted  truth  with  thy  persuasioe  strain ; 
Teach  erring  man  to  spurn  the  rage  of  gain ; 


115 


Teach  him  that  states  of  natiue  strength  possest, 
Though  very  poor,  may  still  be  eery  blest; 

That  trade’s  proud  empire  hastes  to  smift  decay. 
As  ocean  stoeeps  the  labor’d  mole  arnay  ; 

While  self-dependent  power  can  time  defy, 

As  rocks  resist  the  billoms  and  the  sky.28 


116 


MOTES 


1  “  Lissoy,  near  Ballymahon,  where  the  poet's  brother,  a  clergy¬ 
man,  had  his  living,  claims  the  honor  of  being  the  spot  from  which 
the  localities  of  ‘  The  Deserted  Village  '  were  derived.  The  church 
which  tops  the  neighboring  hill,  the  mill,  and  the  brook,  are  still  point¬ 
ed  out ;  and  a  hawthorn  has  suffered  the  penalty  of  poetical  celebrity, 
being  cut  to  pieces  by  those  admirers  of  the  bard  who  desired  to  have 
classical  tooth-pick  cases  and  tobacco-stoppers.  Much  of  this  sup¬ 
posed  locality  may  be  fanciful,  but  it  is  a  pleasing  tribute  to  the  poet 
in  the  land  of  his  fathers." — SIR  WALTER  SCOTT,  Miscellaneous 
Prose  Works,  vol.  iii.  p.  250,  ed.  1834. 

2  Supposed  to  allude  to  the  number  of  saints'  days  in  Ireland,  kept 
by  the  Roman  Catholic  peasantry. 

3  The  “  tyrant  "  said  to  be  intended  in  this  and  other  passages 
was  Lieutenant-General  Robert  Napier  (or  Naper,  as  his  name  was 
more  frequently  written),  an  English  gentleman  who,  on  his  return 
from  Spain,  purchased  an  estate  near  Ballymahon,  and  ejected  many 
of  his  tenants  for  non-payment  of  their  rents. 

4  “  Those  who  have  walked  in  an  evening  by  the  sedgy  sides 
of  unfrequented  rivers  must  remember  a  variety  of  notes  from  different 
water-fowl — the  loud  scream  of  the  wild-goose,  the  croaking  of  the 
mallard,  the  whining  of  the  lapwing,  and  the  tremulous  neighing 
of  the  jacksnipe ;  but  of  all  these  sounds,  there  is  none  so  dismally 
hollow  as  the  booming  of  the  bittern.  It  is  impossible  for  words  to 
give  those  who  have  not  heard  this  evening  call  an  adequate  idea  of 
its  solemnity.  It  is  like  an  interrupted  bellowing  of  a  bull,  but  hollower 


117 


NOTES 


and  louder,  and  is  heard  at  a  mile's  distance,  as  if  issuing  from  some 
formidable  being  that  resided  at  the  bottom  of  the  waters.  I  remember, 
in  the  place  where  I  was  a  boy,  with  what  terror  this  bird's  note  af¬ 
fected  the  whole  village :  they  considered  it  as  a  presage  of  some  sad 
event,  and  generally  found  or  made  one  to  succeed  it." — History  of 
Animated  Nature,  vol.  vi.  p.  24. 

s  “  And  every  want  to  luxury  allied." 

First  Edition,  altered  in  Third. 

6  Here  followed,  in  the  first,  second,  and  third  editions: 

“  Here,  as  with  doubtful,  pensive  steps  I  range, 

Trace  every  scene,  and  wonder  at  the  change, 
Remembrance,"  etc. 

7  “  My  anxious  day  to  husband  near  the  close, 

And  keep  life's  flame  from  wasting  by  repose." 

First,  Second,  and  Third  Editions. 

8  “  Towards  the  decline  of  his  life  he  [Waller]  bought  a  small 
house  with  a  little  land  at  Coleshill,  and  said  ‘  he  should  be  glad  to 
die  like  the  stag — where  he  was  roused.'  This,  however,  did  not 
happen." — JOHNSON,  Life  of  Waller. 

9  “  How  blest  is  he  who  crowns,  in  shades  like  these." 

First  Edition,  altered  in  Third. 

10  “  Sinks  to  the  grave  with  unperceiv'd  decay." 

First  Edition,  altered  in  Third. 

11  Watson's  large  engraving  (1772),  after  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds's 
picture  of  “  Resignation,"  is  thus  inscribed :  “  This  attempt  to  ex¬ 
press  a  character  in  ‘  The  Deserted  Village  '  is  dedicated  to  Dr.  Gold¬ 
smith  by  his  sincere  friend  and  admirer,  JOSHUA  REYNOLDS." 

12  The  “sad  historian  of  the  pensive  plain  "  (whose  figure  is  to 
be  seen  on  the  copper-plate  vignette  of  the  editions  published  in  Gold¬ 
smith's  lifetime)  was,  it  is  said,  Catherine  Geraghty,  of  Lissoy.  The 
brook  and  ditches  near  the  spot  where  her  cabin  stood  still  furnish 
cresses,  and  several  of  her  descendants  were  residing  in  the  village 
in  1837. 

x3  The  “village  preacher"  was,  it  is  said,  the  poet's  father — so, 


D 


118 


NOTES 


at  least,  his  sister,  Mrs.  Hodson,  believed ;  but  the  poet’s  brother,  and 
his  uncle  Contarine,  have  both  been  named  as  the  originals  of  this 
delightful  character. 

J4  "  Unskilful  he  to  fawn.” — First  Edition,  altered  in  Fifth. 

“  More  bent  to  raise.” — First  Edition,  altered  in  Fifth. 

16  ”  Our  vows  are  heard  betimes,  and  Heaven  takes  care 
To  grant  before  we  can  conclude  the  pray’r; 

Preventing  angels  met  it  half  the  way. 

And  sent  us  back  to  praise  who  came  to  pray.” 

DRYDEN,  Britannia  Rediviva. 

*7  Goldsmith  is  here  supposed  to  have  drawn  the  portrait  of  his 
own  early  instructor,  Mr.  Thomas  Byrne,  a  retired  quartermaster  of 
an  Irish  regiment  that  had  served  in  Marlborough’s  wars. 

18  “  Goldsmith’s  chaste  pathos  makes  him  an  insinuating  moralist, 
and  throws  a  charm  of  Claude-like  softness  over  his  descriptions  of 
homely  objects  that  would  seem  only  fit  to  be  the  subjects  of  Dutch 
painting.  But  his  quiet  enthusiasm  leads  the  affections  to  humble 
things  without  a  vulgar  association ;  and  he  inspires  us  with  a  fond¬ 
ness  to  trace  the  simplest  recollections  of  Auburn,  till  we  count  the 
furniture  of  its  ale-house,  and  listen  to  the  ‘  varnish’d  clock  that  click’d 
behind  the  door.” — CAMPBELL,  British  Poets,  vol.  vi.  p.  263. 

J9  An  ale-house,  on  the  supposed  site  of  this,  in  the  Deserted  Village, 
and  with  the  sign  of  “  The  Three  Jolly  Pigeons  ”  (in  honor,  doubt¬ 
less,  of  Tony  Lumpkin),  was  rebuilt  or  repaired  by  Mr.  Hogan,  the 
poet’s  relative. — PRIOR’S  Life,  ii.  265. 

20  “  Happy,  very  happy,  might  they  have  been,  had  they  known 
when  to  bound  their  riches  and  their  glory.  Had  they  known  that 
extending  empire  is  often  diminishing  power ;  that  countries  are  ever 
strongest  which  are  internally  powerful ;  that  colonies,  by  draining 
away  the  brave  and  enterprising,  leave  the  country  in  the  hands  of 
the  timid  and  the  avaricious ;  .  .  .  that  too  much  commerce  may  in¬ 
jure  a  nation  as  well  as  too  little ;  and  that  there  is  a  wide  difference 
between  a  conquering  and  a  flourishing  empire.” — The  Citizen  of 
the  World,  Letter  xxv. 


119 


MOTES 


21  “  To  see  each  joy/'  etc. — First  Edition,  altered  in  Third. 

22  “  The.se  poor  shivering  females  have  once  seen  happier  clays, 
and  been  flattered  into  beauty.  They  have  been  prostituted  to  the 
gay  luxurious  villain,  and  are  now  turned  out  to  meet  the  severity 
of  winter.  Perhaps,  note  lying  at  the  doors  of  their  betrayers,  they 
sue  to  wretches  whose  hearts  are  insensible,  or  debauchees  who  may 
curse,  but  will  not  relieve,  them." — The  Citizen  of  the  World,  Letter 
cxvii. 

23  A  river  in  Georgia ;  properly  Altamaha,  and  pronounced  Olta- 
mahaw. 

24  The  jaguar,  or  American  tiger,  is  unknown  on  the  banks  of 
the  Altamaha. 

“  I  believe  I  have  taken  a  poetical  license  to  transplant  the  jackal 
from  Asia.  In  Greece  I  never  saw  nor  heard  these  animals  ;  but  among 
the  ruins  of  Ephesus  I  have  heard  them  by  hundreds.  They  haunt 
ruins  and  follow  armies." — LORD  BYRON,  Siege  of  Corinth,  note. 

25  “  And  left  a  lover's  for  her  father's  arms." 

First,  Second,  and  Third  Editions. 

26  “  In  all  the  decent  manliness  of  grief." 

First,  Second,  and  Third  Editions. 

27  The  river  Tornea  falls  into  the  Gulf  of  Bothnia.  Pambamarca 
is  a  mountain  near  Quito. 

28  “  Dr.  Johnson  favored  me,  at  the  same  time,  by  marking  the 
lines  which  he  furnished  to  Goldsmith's  ‘  Deserted  Village,'  which 
are  only  the  last  four.  "—BOSWELL  by  Croker,  p.  174. 


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